MICHAEL GRUNWALD: The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama

[SunsetDreams]

TIME just published “The Party of No,” an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.” The excerpt includes a special bonus nugget of Mitt Romney dissing the Tea Party.

...

Cantor’s whip staff had been planning a “walk-back” strategy in which they would start leaking that 50 Republicans might vote yes, then that they were down to 30 problem children, then that they might lose 20 or so. The idea was to convey momentum. “You want the members to feel like, Oh, the herd is moving. I’ve got to move with the herd,” explains Rob Collins, Cantor’s chief of staff at the time. That way, even if a dozen Republicans ultimately defected, it would look as if Obama failed to meet expectations.

...

• David Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, met with his GOP counterpart, Jerry Lewis, to explain what Democrats had in mind for the stimulus and ask what Republicans wanted to include. “Jerry’s response was, ‘I’m sorry, but leadership tells us we can’t play,’ ” Obey told me. “Exact quote: ‘We can’t play.’ What they said right from the get-go was, It doesn’t matter what the hell you do, we ain’t going to help you. We’re going to stand on the sidelines and bitch.”

Lewis blames Obey and the Democrats for the committee’s turn toward extreme partisanship, but he doesn’t deny that GOP leaders made a decision not to play. “The leadership decided there was no play to be had,” he says. Republicans recognized that after Obama’s big promises about bipartisanship, they could break those promises by refusing to cooperate. In the words of Congressman Tom Cole, a deputy Republican whip: “We wanted the talking point: ‘The only thing bipartisan was the opposition.’ ”

http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

Republicans guilty of trying to shut down the Government and to hell with the American people and what's best for the Country. All because of their hatred over one man.

[northoftheborder]

1. What would be the best way to make the American people aware of this strategy???

People like us already know this. MOST people only have a vague notion that Congress isn't accomplishing anything, but blame them all, and have no notion of what really has gone on.

[Tennessee Gal]

5. That is the dilemma. The media we watch talks about it periodically.

However, there is no way that the right wing media has ever reported anything about this.

[Angry Dragon]

2. The party of TRAITORS

and they broke their Oath of Office

[WooWooWoo]

3. it's smart politics

Obama was set up like the new Reagan/FDR hybrid, tasked to save the country from the brink of disaster and usher in a new era of progressive change.

The GOP wasn't going to let that happen. They weren't just going to let a new president come in and actually fix a mess their party had made and become a legend.

They had one card in their hand and they played it over and over - obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.

It was really their only choice, politically, or else the party would have totally become irrelevant as it wilted under the achievements Obama would have had.

[SunsetDreams]

4. .